JavaScript is the most popular lightweight scripting language which works in the major browsers such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera. It is also easy to use to build a dynamic and interactive website. One of its useful functionalities is image rollover that is changing an image into another image when a mouse hovers over the original image. Then the new image will change back to the original one when the mouse moves away. This article will show you how to do just that step by step; therefore, knowing some basic HTML and JavaScript is required.

Webpage Example

Steps

1

Prepare two images for the rollover effect. Select two different images to make a rollover image and save them in the same folder where you will save your HTML file displaying a rollover image.

2

Open any text editor of your choice. Dreamweaver will be used as the text editor in this article. Otherwise, if your text editor is blank when you open it, you need to enter HTML elements to build a web page.

3

Locate the <head></head> section. JavaScript code will be inserted within the <head></head> tag. Two JavaScript functions will be created to change the images. The two functions are named MouseRollover and MouseOut in the code below. The image’s src property will be used to change the image’s source when those two functions are called.

Paste the JavaScript code in between the <head></head> section onto your text editor. The MyPicture2.jpg in the function MouseRollover should be replaced by your rollover image’s name and the MyPicture1.jpg in the function called MouseOut should be replaced by your original image’s name.

6

Locate the <body></body> section. The image tag <image src=”FileName” Alt=”Title” boarder="0px" width="650px" height="550px"/> will be applied to display the rollover image. In this example, the Alt=”Title” that refers to the image title’s name is omitted.

Paste the code in between the <body></body> section. The onmouseover property is added inside the image tag above and will be assigned to call the JavaScript function Image Rollover to change your original image to a new rollover image. Replace MyPicture1.jpg with your original image’s name. Moreover, another property called onMouseOut is added in order to change the image back into its original one when you move your mouse away from the rollover image.

9

Review the entire code. Your code should look similar to the code below. You can play around with the code from this example and see how things change.

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Tips

Be sure to put your saved HTML file at the same location where your two images are.

Save your HTML document more often during your work.

Another option to preview the finished web page in a browser is that you can click your browser icon in the folder where you keep your work to display the web page. In the screenshot, the default html file is in Dreamweaver, you can right click and select your browser being installed on your computer.